EDITOR'S NOTE: The Freeman's 'Destinations' takes a look at the touristic places that define the Hudson Valley and the Catskills. The occasional series is set to run the last Sunday of every month during 2013.

Kevin Oldenburg is pretty straightforward when he meets a group of expectant tourists for the first time.

"You're not going to learn about this piece of furniture or that piece of furniture. This is not a furniture tour," Oldenburg announces at the get-go.

"We want you to come away with what life was like in this time period rather than what chair people sat in."

Oldenburg is referring to the storied Gilded Age, a period in American history between the Civil War and World War I when vast fortunes were made by tycoons and social classes were more clearly defined.

American authors Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner were the first to label this period in American history the Gilded Age, and it wasn't necessarily meant as a compliment. Instead, the term pointed to the conspicuous consumption of the nation's wealthiest during the birth of industrial America.

You are about to step back in time to that period and learn more about it as you tour the 50,000-square-foot Vanderbilt Mansion National Historic Site in Hyde Park, one of the Hudson Valley's top tourist spots, annually drawing up to 350,000 visitors.

In the third of our series "Destinations," our readers will serve as the tour group guided by Oldenburg, a National Park Service ranger for 12 years.

For starters, he will tell you that the mansion is more accurately a "country cottage" owned by Frederick and Louise Vanderbilt.

Compared to other Vanderbilt-owned estates, the Hyde Park home is "miniscule," Oldenburg said.

"People are astonished to know it's the smallest of all (Vanderbilt) homes," he said.

"To call it a small cottage is almost somewhat comical, but by Vanderbilt standards, it was just a small cottage."

Oldenburg fashions each tour as if visitors are being received by the Vanderbilt's.

Perhaps a bit of background on the host and hostess is warranted before the tour begins.

Frederick William Vanderbilt, the son of William Henry and grandson of railroad mogul Cornelius Vanderbilt, bought the property in 1895.

He married his first cousin, Louise Holmes Anthony Torrance, 17 years earlier. She was the maternal granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt.

The marriage was not arranged, Oldenburg is quick to point out.

"Far from it," he said. "When Frederick got married, he was 22, and she was 34. She was also divorced from Frederick's first cousin, so about three months after they were married, he said to Louise, 'We should probably tell my father we got married.'"

The couple chose to place the wedding announcement in a newspaper, so Vanderbilt's father found out about it that way, Oldenburg said.

Frederick was the only one of eight Vanderbilt children to go to college, graduating from Yale University's Sheffield Scientific School in 1876 with a degree in horticulture, Oldenburg said.

For 61 years, Vanderbilt served as the director of the New York Central Railroad. He also led the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie and Chicago and North Western railroads.

In addition to the Hyde Park mansion, Vanderbilt had homes in New York City, Newport, R.I. (Rough Point), Bar Harbor, Me. (Sonogee) and the Adirondacks (Pine Tree Point).

"The first generation (Cornelius Vanderbilt) made the fortune. The second (William Henry) doubled it, and the third generation (Frederick) spent it," Oldenburg said.

"They built 40 homes between the eight of them. These homes are more seasonal estates, with the one in Hyde Park being the smallest."

Vanderbilt hired the architects, McKim, Mead and White to design the house, and his wife had a huge say in what it would become, said Scott Rector, chief of interpretation at the Vanderbilt site.

Mrs. Vanderbilt was a socialite, who was looking to emulate the opulence of European aristocrats, he said.

In fact, she traveled to Europe with designer Stanford White, a partner in the architectural firm that built the mansion, to pick out the furnishings, Rector said.

"She had a major voice in how the mansion was set up," Rector said. "Basically, these financiers and industrialists lived in a style emulating European pomp. That is reflected in the furnishings, the tapestries, the walls and in the design of the architecture itself."

It is worth noting that the entire estate, including the original furnishings, was donated to the National Park Service at the urging of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Rector said.

"When Frederick turned the property over to his niece (Margaret Louise Van Allen), she didn't have the need for the estate, so she tried to sell it off outright with the only stipulation being that the property stay intact," Rector said.

"It was during the Depression, and not many people had that kind of money, so basically, FDR talked to her and asked her if she'd be willing to donate it to the National Park Service."

Though some of the family's personal items may have been removed, everything else was left as is when it was handed over, Rector said.

"It's all the original furnishings set up the way it was when they lived there," he said.

As extraordinary as all of that is, Oldenburg isn't so caught up in the trappings.

Rather, he wants tourists to come away with a deeper understanding of what life was like for prominent families in the Gilded Age.

"When guests arrived, they were greeted by the butler," Ogdenburg tells visitors. "Their cloaks were taken and hung in a side room, and they'd go out to the middle of the hall, which was like a hotel lobby, where people would mingle before dinner."

When it was ready, the guests would be ushered into the dining room.

"Dinner was a pretty elaborate affair from an hour-and-a half to three hours in length," Oldenburg explained.

Following that, the company would then split, with the men closing themselves off in a den to talk business, smoke cigars and drink brandy.

"It was like a Gilded Age man cave," Oldenburg said.

The ladies, on the other hand, would go to the gold reception hall directly across from the den and talk about the parties they had attended and what the other women were wearing.

"What they were essentially doing was deciding who belongs in their society," Oldenburg said. "The men and women were actually working together to create that society."

The genders would then reassemble in the drawing room for more socialization, often with live chamber music--such as a string quartet--playing in the background, Oldenburg said.

The drawing room was broken into three conversational areas, and the socialization lasted until about midnight after which the guests would head off to their bedrooms.

Oldenburg said guests often find Mrs. Vanderbilt's bedroom, fashioned after Marie Antoinette's, the most astounding in the 54-room mansion.

"It's almost like the palace of Versailles--right down to a large railing that goes around her bed. For Louise, it was for show," Oldenburg said, noting that she was the type of woman who would visit Paris once a year to get her dresses made.

Typically, the Vanderbilts' guests would stay for an extended weekend in Hyde Park, mostly in the spring and fall. The couple used it as a seasonal home in the spring and fall, Oldenburg said.

Once guests awakened from their first night at the Dutchess County mansion, they would be served breakfast in their rooms, often on color-coordinated China. They would then head outside for "play."

"During the course of the day, it was all about being outdoors, rather than being stuck in the house," Oldenburg said

Recreation often included horseback riding, a game of croquet or sailing on the Hudson River.

Guests would often have a picnic lunch on the vast grounds, enjoy afternoon tea with their hosts and engage in further recreation before returning to the mansion for another elegant evening of dinner and post-dinner conversation.

Tours of the mansion take about an hour, and Oldenburg said he enjoys taking guests' questions.

Sometimes, they send him back to the books to uncover a little-known fact or two.

"That's how we become well-versed in what we do. The visitors are constantly helping us learn," Oldenburg said.

In the dozen or so years Oldenburg has worked for the National Park Service, he estimates he's given "tens of thousands of tours" and said his job at the mansion never gets old.

In fact, he said he knows he's a lucky man to be able to work on such luxurious grounds and share his love for history.

"Sending everyone home with a smile is kind of cool to do," he said.

The Vanderbilt mansion is open daily (with the exception of Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's) from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.